A CHRISTIAN AGNOSTIC
"--giver mig Rum!
Himlen bar Stjerner Natten er stum."
It was a good many days before they got the dazzle of that gold out of
their eyes. They found their tongues again, and talked "Minóok" from
morning till night among themselves and with the rare passer up or down
the trail.
Mac began to think they might get dogs at Anvik, or at one of the
Ingalik villages, a little further on. The balance of opinion in the
camp was against this view. But he had Potts on his side. When the New
Year opened, the trail was in capital condition. On the second of
January two lots of Indians passed, one with dogs hauling flour and
bacon for Benham, and the other lot without dogs, dragging light
hand-sleds. Potts said restlessly:
"After all, _they_ can do it."
"So can we if we've a mind to," said Mac.
"Come on, then."
The camp tried hard to dissuade them. Naturally neither listened. They
packed the Boy's sled and set off on the morning of the third, to
Kaviak's unbounded surprise and disgust, his view of life being that,
wherever Mac went, he was bound to follow. And he did follow--made off
as hard as his swift little feet could carry him, straight up the Yukon
trail, and Farva lost a good half of that first morning bringing him
home.
Just eight days later the two men walked into the Cabin and sat
down--Potts with a heart-rending groan, Mac with his jaw almost
dislocated in his cast-iron attempt to set his face against defeat;
their lips were cracked with the cold, their faces raw from frostbite,
their eyes inflamed. The weather--they called it the weather--had been
too much for them. It was obvious they hadn't brought back any dogs,
but--
"What did you think of Anvik?" says the Boy.
"Anvik? You don't suppose we got to Anvik in weather like this!"
"How far _did_ you get?"
Mac didn't answer. Potts only groaned. He had frozen his cheek and his
right hand.
They were doctored and put to bed.
"Did you see my friends at Holy Cross?" the Boy asked Potts when he
brought him a bowl of hot bean-soup.
"You don't suppose we got as far as Holy Cross, with the wind--"
"Well, where _did_ you get to? Where you been?"
"Second native village above."
"Why, that isn't more'n sixteen miles."
"Sixteen miles too far."
Potts breathed long and deep between hot and comforting swallows.
"Where's the Boy's sled?" said the Colonel, coming in hurriedly.
"We cached it," answered Potts feebly.
"Couldn't even bring his sled home! _Where've_ you cached it?"
"It's all right--only a few miles back."
Potts relinquished the empty soup-bowl, and closed his eyes.
* * * * *
When he opened them again late in the evening it was to say:
"Found some o' those suckers who were goin' so slick to Minóok; some o'
_them_ down at the second village, and the rest are winterin' in Anvik,
so the Indians say. Not a single son of a gun will see the diggins till
the ice goes out."
"Then, badly off as we are here," says the Colonel to the Boy, "it's
lucky for us we didn't join the procession."
When Mac and the Boy brought the sled home a couple of days later, it
was found that a portion of its cargo consisted of a toy kyak and two
bottles of hootchino, the maddening drink concocted by the natives out
of fermented dough and sugar.
Apart from the question of drinking raised again by the "hootch," it is
perhaps possible that, having so little else to do, they were ready to
eat the more; it is also true that, busy or idle, the human body
requires more nourishment in the North than it does in the South.
Certainly the men of the little Yukon camp began to find their rations
horribly short commons, and to suffer a continual hunger, never wholly
appeased. It is conditions like these that bring out the brute latent
in all men. The day came to mean three scant meals. Each meal came to
mean a silent struggle in each man's soul not to let his stomach get
the better of his head and heart. At first they joked and laughed about
their hunger and the scarcity. By-and-by it became too serious, the
jest was wry-faced and rang false. They had, in the beginning, each
helped himself from common dishes set in the middle of the rough plank
table. Later, each found how, without meaning to--hating himself for
it--he watched food on its way to others' plates with an evil eye. When
it came to his turn, he had an ever-recurrent struggle with himself not
to take the lion's share. There were ironical comments now and then,
and ill-concealed bitterness. No one of the five would have believed he
could feel so towards a human being about a morsel of food, but those
who think they would be above it, have not wintered in the Arctic
regions or fought in the Boer War. The difficulty was frankly faced at
last, and it was ordained in council that the Colonel should be
dispenser of the food.
"Can't say I like the office," quoth he, "but here goes!" and he cut
the bacon with an anxious hand, and spooned out the beans solemnly as
if he weighed each "go." And the Trio presently retired to the Little
Cabin to discuss whether the Colonel didn't show favouritism to the
Boy, and, when Mac was asleep, how they could get rid of Kaviak.
So presently another council was called, and the Colonel resigned his
office, stipulating that each man in turn should hold it for a week,
and learn how ungrateful it was. Moreover, that whoever was, for the
nonce, occupying the painful post, should be loyally upheld by all the
others, which arrangement was in force to the end.
And still, on grounds political, religious, social, trivial, the
disaffection grew. Two of the Trio sided against the odd man, Potts,
and turned him out of the Little Cabin one night during a furious
snowstorm, that had already lasted two days, had more than half buried
the hut, and nearly snowed up the little doorway. The Colonel and the
Boy had been shovelling nearly all the day before to keep free the
entrance to the Big Cabin and the precious "bottle" window, as well as
their half of the path between the two dwellings. O'Flynn and Potts had
played poker and quarrelled as usual.
The morning after the ejection of Potts, and his unwilling reception at
the Big Cabin, Mac and O'Flynn failed to appear for breakfast.
"Guess they're huffy," says Potts, stretching out his feet, very
comfortable in their straw-lined mucklucks, before the big blaze.
"Bring on the coffee, Kaviak."
"No," says the Colonel, "we won't begin without the other fellows."
"By the living Jingo, _I_ will then!" says Potts, and helps himself
under the Colonel's angry eyes.
The other two conferred a moment, then drew on their parkis and
mittens, and with great difficulty, in spite of yesterday's work, got
the door open. It was pretty dark, but there was no doubt about it, the
Little Cabin had disappeared.
"Look! isn't that a curl of smoke?" said the Boy.
"Yes, by George! they're snowed under!"
"Serve 'em right!"
A heavy sigh from the Colonel. "Yes, but _we'll_ have to dig 'em out!"
"Look here, Colonel"--the Boy spoke with touching solemnity--"_not
before breakfast!_"
"Right you are!" laughed the Colonel; and they went in.
It was that day, after the others had been released and fed, that the
Boy fell out with Potts concerning who had lost the hatchet--and they
came to blows. A black eye and a bloody nose might not seem an
illuminating contribution to the question, but no more was said about
the hatchet after the Colonel had dragged the Boy off the prostrate
form of his adversary.
But the Colonel himself lost his temper two days later when O'Flynn
broached the seal set months before on the nearly empty demijohn. For
those famous "temperance punches" the Colonel had drawn on his own
small stock. He saw his blunder when O'Flynn, possessing himself of the
demijohn, roared out:
"It's my whisky, I tell you! I bought it and paid furr it, and but for
me it would be at the bottom o' the Yukon now."
"Yes, and you'd be at the bottom of the Yukon yourself if you hadn't
been dragged out by the scruff o' your neck. And you'd be in a pretty
fix now, if we left you alone with your whisky, which is about all
you've got."
"We agreed," Potts chipped in, "that it should be kept for medicinal
purposes only."
Sullenly O'Flynn sipped at his grog. Potts had "hogged most of the
hootch."
* * * * *
"Look here, Boy," said Mac at supper, "I said I wouldn't eat off this
plate again."
"Oh, dry up! One tin plate's like another tin plate."
"Are you reflecting on the washer-up, Mr. MacCann?" asked Potts.
"I'm saying what I've said before--that I've scratched my name on my
plate, and I won't eat off this rusty, battered kettle-lid."
He held it up as if to shy it at the Boy. The young fellow turned with
a flash in his eye and stood taut. Then in the pause he said quite low:
"Let her fly, MacCann."
But MacCann thought better of it. He threw the plate down on the table
with a clatter. The Colonel jumped up and bent over the mush-pot at the
fire, beside the Boy, whispering to him.
"Oh, all right."
When the Boy turned back to the table, with the smoking kettle, the
cloud had gone from his face. MacCann had got up to hang a blanket over
the door. While his back was turned the Boy brought a tin plate, still
in good condition, set it down at Mac's place, planted a nail on end in
the middle, and with three blows from a hammer fastened the plate
firmly to the board.
"Maybe you can't hand it up for more as often as you like, but you'll
always find it there," he said when McCann came back. And the laugh
went against the dainty pioneer, who to the end of the chapter ate from
a plate nailed fast to the table.
"I begin to understand," says the Colonel to the Boy, under cover of
the others' talk, "why it's said to be such a devil of a test of a
fellow's decency to winter in this infernal country."
"They say it's always a man's pardner he comes to hate most," returned
the Boy, laughing good-humouredly at the Colonel.
"Naturally. Look at the row in the Little Cabin."
"That hasn't been the only row," the Boy went on more thoughtfully. "I
say, Colonel"--he lowered his voice--"do you know there'll have to be a
new system of rations? I've been afraid--now I'm _sure_--the grub won't
last till the ice goes out."
"I know it," said the Colonel very gravely.
"Was there a miscalculation?"
"I hope it was that--or else," speaking still lower, "the stores have
been tampered with, and not by Kaviak either. There'll be a hell of a
row." He looked up, and saw Potts watching them suspiciously. It had
come to this: if two men talked low the others pricked their ears. "But
lack of grub," resumed the Colonel in his usual voice, as though he had
not noticed, "is only one of our difficulties. Lack of work is just
about as bad. It breeds a thousand devils. We're a pack o' fools. Here
we are, all of us, hard hit, some of us pretty well cleaned out o'
ready cash, and here's dollars and dollars all round us, and we sit
over the fire like a lot of God-forsaken natives."
"Dollars! Where?"
"Growin' on the trees, boys; a forest full."
"Oh, timber." Enthusiasm cooled.
"Look at what they say about those fellows up at Anvik, what they made
last year."
"They've got a saw-mill."
"_Now_ they have. But they cut and sold cord-wood to the steamers two
years before they got a mill, and next summer will be the biggest
season yet. We ought to have set to, as soon as the cabins were built,
and cut wood for the summer traffic. But since there are five of us, we
can make a good thing of it yet."
The Colonel finally carried the day. They went at it next morning, and,
as the projector of the work had privately predicted, a better spirit
prevailed in the camp for some time. But here were five men, only one
of whom had had any of the steadying grace of stiff discipline in his
life, men of haphazard education, who had "chucked" more or less easy
berths in a land of many creature comforts ... for this--to fell and
haul birch and fir trees in an Arctic climate on half-rations! It began
to be apparent that the same spirit was invading the forest that had
possession of the camp; two, or at most three, did the work, and the
rest shirked, got snow-blindness and rheumatism, and let the others do
his share, counting securely, nevertheless, on his fifth of the
proceeds, just as he counted (no matter what proportion he had
contributed) on his full share of the common stock of food.
"I came out here a Communist--" said the Boy one day to the Colonel.
"And an agnostic," smiled the older man.
"Oh, I'm an agnostic all right, now and for ever. But this winter has
cured my faith in Communism."
Early February brought not only lengthening daylight, but a radical
change in the weather. The woodsmen worked in their shirt-sleeves,
perspired freely, and said in the innocence of their hearts, "If winter
comes early up here, spring does the same." The whole hillside was one
slush, and the snow melting on the ill-made Little Cabin roof brought a
shower-bath into the upper bunk.
Few things in nature so surely stir the pulse of man as the untimely
coming of a few spring days, that have lost their way in the calendar,
and wandered into winter. No trouble now to get the Big Chimney men
away from the fireside. They held up their bloodless faces in the faint
sunshine, and their eyes, with the pupils enlarged by the long reign of
night, blinked feebly, like an owl's forced to face the morning.
There were none of those signs in the animal world outside, of
premature stir and cheerful awaking, that in other lands help the
illusion that winter lies behind, but there was that even more
stimulating sweet air abroad, that subtle mixture of sun and yielding
frost, that softened wind that comes blowing across the snow, still
keen to the cheek, but subtly reviving to the sensitive nostril, and
caressing to the eyes. The Big Chimney men drew deep breaths, and said
in their hearts the battle was over and won.
Kaviak, for ever following at Mac's heels "like a rale Irish tarrier,"
found his allegiance waver in these stirring, blissful days, if ever
Farva so belied character and custom as to swing an axe for any length
of time. Plainly out of patience, Kaviak would throw off the musk-rat
coat, and run about in wet mucklucks and a single garment--uphill,
downhill, on important errands which he confided to no man.
It is part of the sorcery of such days that men's thoughts, like
birds', turn to other places, impatient of the haven that gave them
shelter in rough weather overpast. The Big Chimney men leaned on their
axes and looked north, south, east, west.
Then the Colonel would give a little start, turn about, lift his
double-bitter, and swing it frontier fashion, first over one shoulder,
then over the other, striking cleanly home each time, working with a
kind of splendid rhythm more harmonious, more beautiful to look at,
than most of the works of men. This was, perhaps, the view of his
comrades, for they did a good deal of looking at the Colonel. He said
he was a modest man and didn't like it, and Mac, turning a little rusty
under the gibe, answered:
"Haven't you got the sense to see we've cut all the good timber just
round here?" and again he turned his eyes to the horizon line.
"Mac's right," said the Boy; and even the Colonel stood still a moment,
and they all looked away to that land at the end of the world where the
best materials are for the building of castles--it's the same country
so plainly pointed out by the Rainbow's End, and never so much as in
the springtime does it lure men with its ancient promise.
"Come along, Colonel; let's go and look for real timber--"
"And let's find it nearer water-level--where the steamers can see it
right away."
"What about the kid?"
"Me come," said Kaviak, with a highly obliging air.
"No; you stay at home."
"No; go too."
"Go too, thou babbler! Kaviak's a better trail man than some I could
mention."
"We'll have to carry him home," objected Potts.
"Now don't tell us you'll do any of the carryin', or we'll lose
confidence in you, Potts."
The trail was something awful, but on their Canadian snowshoes they got
as far as an island, six miles off. One end of it was better wooded
than any easily accessible place they had seen.
"Why, this is quite like real spruce," said the Boy, and O'Flynn
admitted that even in California "these here would be called 'trees'
wid no intintion o' bein' sarcaustic."
So they cut holes in the ice, and sounded for the channel.
"Yes, sir, the steamers can make a landin' here, and here's where we'll
have our wood-rack."
They went home in better spirits than they had been in since that
welter of gold had lain on the Big Cabin table.
* * * * *
But a few days sufficed to wear the novelty off the new wood camp for
most of the party. Potts and O'Flynn set out in the opposite direction
one morning with a hand-sled, and provisions to last several days. They
were sick of bacon and beans, and were "goin' huntin'." No one could
deny that a moose or even a grouse--anything in the shape of fresh
meat--was sufficiently needed. But Potts and O'Flynn were really sick
and sore from their recent slight attack of wood-felling. They were
after bigger game, too, as well as grouse, and a few days "off." It had
turned just enough colder to glaze the trail and put it in fine
condition. They went down the river to the _Oklahoma,_ were generously
entertained by Captain Rainey, and learned that, with earlier contracts
on his hands, he did not want more wood from them than they had already
corded. They returned to the camp without game, but with plenty of
whisky, and information that freed them from the yoke of labour, and
from the lash of ironic comment. In vain the Colonel urged that the
_Oklahoma_ was not the only steamer plying the Yukon, that with the big
rush of the coming season the traffic would be enormous, and a
wood-pile as good as a gold mine. The cause was lost.
"You won't get us to make galley-slaves of ourselves on the off-chance
of selling. Rainey says that wood camps have sprung up like mushrooms
all along the river. The price of wood will go down to--"
"All along the river! There isn't one between us and Andreievsky, nor
between here and Holy Cross."
But it was no use. The travellers pledged each other in _Oklahoma_
whisky, and making a common cause once more, the original Trio put in a
night of it. The Boy and the Colonel turned into their bunks at eleven
o'clock. They were roused in the small hours, by Kaviak's frightened
crying, and the noise of angry voices.
"You let the kid alone."
"Well, it's mesilf that'll take the liberty o' mintionin' that I ain't
goin' to stand furr another minyit an Esquimer's cuttin' down _my_
rations. Sure it's a fool I've been!"
"You can't help that," Mac chopped out.
"Say Mac," said Potts in a drunken voice, "I'm talkin' to you like a
friend. You want to get a move on that kid."
"Kaviak's goin' won't make any more difference than a fly's."
The other two grumbled incoherently.
"But I tell you what _would_ make a difference: if you two would quit
eatin' on the sly--out o' meal-times."
"Be the Siven!"
"You lie!" A movement, a stool overturned, and the two men in the bunks
were struck broad awake by the smart concussion of a gun-shot. Nobody
was hurt, and between them they disarmed Potts, and turned the Irishman
out to cool off in his own cabin. It was all over in a minute. Kaviak,
reassured, curled down to sleep again. Mac and Potts stretched
themselves on the buffalo-robe half under the table, and speedily fell
to snoring. The Boy put on some logs. He and the Colonel sat and
watched the sparks.
"It's a bad business."
"It can't go on," says the Colonel; "but Mac's right: Kaviak's being
here isn't to blame. They--we, too--are like a lot of powder-cans."
The Boy nodded. "Any day a spark, and _biff!_ some of us are in a
blaze, and wh-tt! bang! and some of us are in Kingdom Come."
"I begin to be afraid to open my lips," said the Colonel. "We all are;
don't you notice?"
"Yes. I wonder why we came."
"_You_ had no excuse," said the elder man almost angrily.
"Same excuse as you."
The Colonel shook his head.
"Exactly," maintained the Boy. "Tired of towns and desk-work,
and--and--" The Boy shifted about on his wooden stool, and held up his
hands to the reviving blaze. "Life owes us steady fellows one year of
freedom, anyhow--one year to make ducks and drakes of. Besides, we've
all come to make our fortunes. Doesn't every mother's son of us mean to
find a gold-mine in the spring when we get to the Klondyke--eh?" And he
laughed again, and presently he yawned, and tumbled back into his bunk.
But he put his head out in a moment. "Aren't you going to bed?"
"Yes." The Colonel stood up.
"Did you know Father Wills went by, last night, when those fellows
began to row about getting out the whisky?"
"No."
"He says there's another stampede on."
"Where to?"
"Koyukuk this time."
"Why didn't he come in?"
"Awful hurry to get to somebody that sent for him. Funny fellas these
Jesuits. They _believe_ all those odd things they teach."
"So do other men," said the Colonel, curtly.
"Well, I've lived in a Christian country all my life, but I don't know
that I ever saw Christianity _practised_ till I went up the Yukon to
Holy Cross."
"I must say you're complimentary to the few other Christians scattered
about the world."
"Don't get mifft, Colonel. I've known plenty of people straight as a
die, and capital good fellows. I've seen them do very decent things now
and then. But with these Jesuit missionaries--Lord! there's no let up
to it."
No answer from the Protestant Colonel. Presently the Boy in a sleepy
voice added elegantly:
"No Siree! The Jesuits go the whole hog!"
* * * * *
Winter was down on the camp again. The whole world was hard as iron.
The men kept close to the Big Chimney all day long, and sat there far
into the small hours of the morning, saying little, heavy-eyed and
sullen. The dreaded insomnia of the Arctic had laid hold on all but the
Colonel. Even his usually unbroken repose was again disturbed one night
about a week later. Some vague sort of sound or movement in the
room--Kaviak on a raid?--or--wasn't that the closing of a door?
"Kaviak!" He put his hand down and felt the straight hair of the
Esquimaux in the under bunk. "Potts! Who's there?" He half sat up.
"Boy! Did you hear that, Boy?"
He leaned far down over the side and saw distinctly by the fire-light
there was nobody but Kaviak in the under bunk.
The Colonel was on his legs in a flash, putting his head through his
parki and drawing on his mucklucks. He didn't wait to cross and tie the
thongs. A presentiment of evil was strong upon him. Outside in the
faint star-light he thought a dim shape was passing down towards the
river.
"Who's that? Hi, there! Stop, or I'll shoot!" He hadn't brought his
gun, but the ruse worked.
"Don't shoot!" came back the voice of the Boy.
The Colonel stumbled down the bank in the snow, and soon stood by the
shape. The Boy was dressed for a journey. His Arctic cap was drawn down
over his ears and neck. The wolf-skin fringe of his parki hood stood
out fiercely round the defiant young face. Wound about one of his
seal-skin mittens was the rope of the new hand-sled he'd been
fashioning so busily of nights by the camp fire. His two blankets were
strapped on the sled, Indian fashion, along with a gunny sack and his
rifle.
The two men stood looking angrily at each other a moment, and then the
Colonel politely inquired:
"What in hell are you doing?"
"Goin' to Minóok."
"The devil you are!"
"Yes, the devil I am!"
They stood measuring each other in the dim light, till the Colonel's
eyes fell on the loaded sled. The Boy's followed.
"I've only taken short rations for two weeks. I left a statement in the
cabin; it's about a fifth of what's my share, so there's no need of a
row."
"What are you goin' for?"
"Why, to be first in the field, and stake a gold-mine, of course."
The Colonel laid a rough hand on the Boy's shoulder. He shook it off
impatiently, and before the older man could speak:
"Look here, let's talk sense. Somebody's got to go, or there'll be
trouble. Potts says Kaviak. But what difference would Kaviak make? I've
been afraid you'd get ahead of me. I've watched you for a week like a
hawk watches a chicken. But it's clear I'm the one to go."
He pulled up the rope of the sled, and his little cargo lurched towards
him. The Colonel stepped in front of him.
"Boy--" he began, but something was the matter with his voice; he got
no further.
"I'm the youngest," boasted the other, "and I'm the strongest, and--I'm
the hungriest."
The Colonel found a perturbed and husky voice in which to say:
"I didn't know you were such a Christian."
"Nothin' o' the sort."
"What's this but--"
"Why, it's just--just my little scheme."
"You're no fool. You know as well as I do you've got the devil's own
job in hand."
"Somebody's got to go," he repeated doggedly.
"Look here," said the Colonel, "you haven't impressed me as being tired
of life."
"Tired of life!" The young eyes flashed in that weird aureole of long
wolf-hair. "Tired of life! Well, I should just pretty nearly think I
wasn't."
"H'm! Then if it isn't Christianity, it must be because you're young."
"Golly, man! it's because I'm hungry--HUNGRY! Great Jehosaphat! I could
eat an ox!"
"And you leave your grub behind, to be eaten by a lot of--"
"I can't stand here argyfying with the thermometer down to--" The Boy
began to drag the sled over the snow.
"Come back into the cabin."
"No."
"Come with me, I say; I've got something to propose." Again the Colonel
stood in front, barring the way. "Look here," he went on gently, "are
you a friend of mine?"
"Oh, so-so," growled the Boy. But after looking about him for an angry
second or two, he flung down the rope of his sled, walked sulkily
uphill, and kicked off his snow-shoes at the door of the cabin, all
with the air of one who waits, but is not baulked of his purpose. They
went in and stripped off their furs.
"Now see here: if you've made up your mind to light out, I'm not going
to oppose you."
"Why didn't you say anything as sensible as that out yonder?"
"Because I won't be ready to go along till to-morrow."
"You?"
"Yep."
There was a little silence.
"I wish you wouldn't, Colonel."
"It's dangerous alone--not for two."
"Yes, it IS dangerous, and you know it."
"I'm goin' along, laddie." Seeing the Boy look precious grave and
harassed: "What's the matter?"
"I'd hate awfully for anything to happen to you."
The Colonel laughed. "Much obliged, but it matters uncommon little if I
do drop in my tracks."
"You be blowed!"
"You see I've got a pretty bad kind of a complaint, anyhow." The Boy
leaned over in the firelight and scanned the Colonel's face.
"What's wrong?"
The Colonel smiled a queer little one-sided smile. "I've been out o'
kelter nearly ten years."
"Oh, _that's_ all right. You'll go on for another thirty if you stay
where you are till the ice goes out."
The Colonel bent his head, and stared at the smooth-trodden floor at
the edge of the buffalo-skin. "To tell the truth, I'll be glad to go,
not only because of--" He hitched his shoulders towards the corner
whence came the hoarse and muffled breathing of the Denver clerk. "I'll
be glad to have something to tire me out, so I'll sleep--sleep too
sound to dream. That's what I came for, not to sit idle in a God-damn
cabin and think--think--" He got up suddenly and strode the tiny space
from fire to door, a man transformed, with hands clenching and dark
face almost evil. "They say the men who winter up here either take to
drink or go mad. I begin to see it is so. It's no place to do any
forgetting in." He stopped suddenly before the Boy with glittering
eyes. "It's the country where your conscience finds you out."
"That religion of yours is makin' you morbid, Colonel." The Boy spoke
with the detached and soothing air of a sage.
"You don't know what you're talking about." He turned sharply away. The
Boy relapsed into silence. The Colonel in his renewed prowling brought
up against the wooden crane. He stood looking down into the fire. Loud
and regular sounded the sleeping man's breathing in the quiet little
room.
"I did a wrong once to a woman--ten years ago," said the Colonel,
speaking to the back-log--"although I loved her." He raised a hand to
his eyes with a queer choking sound. "I loved her," he repeated, still
with his back to the Boy. "By-and-by I could have righted it, but
she--she wasn't the kind to hang about and wait on a man's better
nature when once he'd shown himself a coward. She skipped the country."
He leaned his head against the end of the shelf over the fire, and said
no more.
"Go back in the spring, find out where she is, and--"
"I've spent every spring and every summer, every fall and every winter
till this one, trying to do just that thing."
"You can't find her?"
"Nobody can find her."
"She's dead--"
"She's _not_ dead!"
The Boy involuntarily shrank back; the Colonel looked ready to smash
him. The action recalled the older man to himself.
"I feel sure she isn't dead," he said more quietly, but still
trembling. "No, no; she isn't dead. She had some money of her own, and
she went abroad. I followed her. I heard of her in Paris, in Rome. I
saw her once in a droschky in Vienna; there I lost the trail. Her
people said she'd gone to Japan. _I_ went to Japan. I'm sure she wasn't
in the islands. I've spent my life since trying to find her--writing
her letters that always come back--trying--" His voice went out like a
candle-wick suddenly dying in the socket. Only the sleeper was audible
for full five minutes. Then, as though he had paused only a comma's
space, the Colonel went on: "I've been trying to put the memory of her
behind me, as a sane man should. But some women leave an arrow sticking
in your flesh that you can never pull out. You can only jar against it,
and cringe under the agony of the reminder all your life long.... Bah!
Go out, Boy, and bring in your sled."
And the Boy obeyed without a word.
Two days after, three men with a child stood in front of the larger
cabin, saying good-bye to their two comrades who were starting out on
snow-shoes to do a little matter of 625 miles of Arctic travelling,
with two weeks' scant provisioning, some tea and things for trading,
bedding, two rifles, and a kettle, all packed on one little hand-sled.
There had been some unexpected feeling, and even some real generosity
shown at the last, on the part of the three who were to profit by the
exodus--falling heir thereby to a bigger, warmer cabin and more food.
O'Flynn was moved to make several touching remonstrances. It was a sign
of unwonted emotion on Mac's part that he gave up arguing (sacrificing
all the delight of a set debate), and simply begged and prayed them not
to be fools, not to fly in the face of Providence.
But Potts was made of sterner stuff. Besides, the thing was too good to
be true. O'Flynn, when he found they were not to be dissuaded, solemnly
presented each with a little bottle of whisky. Nobody would have
believed O'Flynn would go so far as that. Nor could anyone have
anticipated that close-fisted Mac would give the Boy his valuable
aneroid barometer and compass, or that Potts would be so generous with
his best Virginia straight-cut, filling the Colonel's big pouch without
so much as a word.
"It's a crazy scheme," says he, shaking the giant Kentuckian by the
hand, "and you won't get thirty miles before you find it out."
"Call it an expedition to Anvik," urged Mac. "Load up there with
reindeer meat, and come back. If we don't get some fresh meat soon,
we'll be having scurvy."
"What you're furr doin'," says O'Flynn for the twentieth time, "has
niver been done, not ayven be Indians. The prastes ahl say so."
"So do the Sour-doughs," said Mac. "It isn't as if you had dogs."
"Good-bye," said the Colonel, and the men grasped hands.
Potts shook hands with the Boy as heartily as though that same hand had
never half throttled him in the cause of a missing hatchet.
"Good-bye, Kiddie. I bequeath you my share o' syrup."
"Good-bye; meet you in the Klondyke!"
"Good-bye. Hooray for the Klondyke in June!"
"Klondyke in June! Hoop-la!"
The two travellers looked back, laughing and nodding, as jolly as you
please. The Boy stooped, made a snow-ball, and fired it at Kaviak. The
child ducked, chuckling, and returned as good as he got. His loosely
packed ball broke in a splash on the back of the Boy's parki, and
Kaviak was loudly cheered.
Still, as they went forward, they looked back. The Big Chimney wore an
air wondrous friendly, and the wide, white world looked coldly at them,
with small pretence of welcome or reward.
"I don't believe I ever really knew how awful jolly the Big Chimney
was--till this minute."
The Colonel smiled. "Hardly like myself, to think whatever else I see,
I'll never see that again."
"Better not boast."
The Colonel went on in front, breaking trail in the newfallen snow, the
Boy pulling the sled behind him as lightly as if its double burden were
a feather.
"They look as if they thought it'd be a picnic," says Mac, grimly.
"I wonder be the Siven Howly Pipers! will we iver see ayther of 'em
again."
"If they only stay a couple o' nights at Anvik," said Potts, with
gloomy foreboding, "they could get back here inside a week."
"No," answered Mac, following the two figures with serious eyes, "they
may be dead inside a week, but they won't be back here."
And Potts felt his anxiety eased. A man who had mined at Caribou ought
to know.